Sandakan: the untold story of the Sandakan death marches, by Paul Ham.

Let's get the obvious criticism out of the way first up. This is clearly not the ''untold story'' of the Sandakan death marches. It's as if a publisher announces a book about the ''forgotten bushranger Ned Kelly'', or the ''unknown race horse Phar Lap''. The story of the slow-motion atrocity of Sandakan has in fact been told many times - about 10 times in 60 years. The War Memorial's powerful Sandakan alcove (including, on curator Ian Affleck's suggestion, individual photographs of virtually all the Australian prisoners) must have been seen by millions of visitors since it was installed in 1999.

But when books are commodities, authors are not entirely responsible for the choice of titles, and especially not their blurbs. I will not let irritation at Random House's marketing staff get in the way of an appreciation of what Paul Ham has attempted and achieved in the latest retelling of the well-known Sandakan story.

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Ham, who has, by sheer word-power, established himself as a high-volume popular historian, especially of the Second World War, has tackled one of the most profound and tragic stories of Australia's short but crowded military history. This is a house-brick of a book but its story deserves retelling.

The Sandakan death marches, in which all but six of about 2400 British and Australian prisoners of war were killed or allowed to die in jungle tracks or camps in Borneo in the war's last year, remains the most horrific of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against Australians in war. (Japanese soldiers perpetrated other horrific acts, but mainly against Asian civilians: this crime is especially relevant to Australians.)

Ham's account follows the story's familiar stations of the cross - the humiliation of Singapore's fall, the fateful decision to join B Force, its awful journey to Borneo, the prisoners' labour on the airfield at Sandakan, the gradual reduction in rations, the rise in beatings, the removal of most officers to Kuching, the beginning of the marches, the sufferings of those left to die in the camps, the few daring escapes, the trials of Japanese responsible, the even more prolonged trials of the survivors. He deals with the quixotic and controversial plan, code-named ''Kingfisher'', to rescue the prisoners, and concludes rightly that it was never feasible.

Perhaps the most terrible passages in a book dealing with ''sustained sadism'' is Ham's description of the torture and execution of Gunner Albert Cleary, whom guards killed in March 1945 after his attempted escape. As a writer, Ham often felt troubled by the evidence he read, in impressive if still incomplete research. He does not flinch from describing the worst, and responds maturely to the problems of how to deal with so profound an abrogation of humanity. In comments after the book's publication, Ham seems inclined to ascribe the guards' brutality to something ''Japanese'', which seems inadequate. But neither he nor I - nor, I think, any of us - can yet understand, much less explain, why all this happened. That remains for a writer with other gifts.

Ham's account of Japanese brutality is balanced by his description of how North Borneo's Malay, Chinese and Indigenous people resisted the Japanese and helped the prisoners. If Sandakan leads some readers to condemn Japanese actions, it ought to lead us all to appreciate that Sandakan is one source of Australia's positive relationship with ''Asia''.

Contrary to some other reviewers' assessments, Paul Ham's Sandakan is not the ''definitive'' account. It is questionable whether the idea of ''definitive'' - rendering future tellings superfluous - is possible. In the case of Sandakan it is neither desirable nor feasible. As anyone who examines the records realises, much cannot be known because, as Ham reminds us, ''99.75 per cent'' of the victims did not survive. That war crimes prosecutors could assemble such compelling (and indeed conclusive) evidence based on the survivors' testimony is impressive, but it surely also points to what could not be documented because so many died. Next year another book on Sandakan, by Dr Michele Cunningham (the daughter of a B Force officer removed to Kuching) will appear. It will no doubt offer another perspective on a story that should not be forgotten.

Paul Ham's Sandakan is flawed in various minor ways. It really is too long, commits odd errors and seems to have been written with undue haste - its roll of honour has been criticised as incomplete and inaccurate. But if we look at what it gives us - a new and compelling account of an episode of enduring interest - we can only be grateful to Ham for turning his talents as a researcher and writer to this subject. In the face of the enormity of suffering with which he deals, to do otherwise would be churlish.

Dr Peter Stanley's Bad Characters was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History in 2011.